Texas A&M University
AC-11: Open Access to Research

Another website is https://www.tdl.org/

OAKTrust (Digital Repository) is an open access digital repository for collecting, preserving, and distributing the scholarly output of Texas A&M University and its partners. It provides increased access to the products of the University's research and scholarship endeavors, fosters the preservation of these digital works for future generations, promotes increasingly rapid advances in scholarly communication, and helps deepen community understanding of the value of higher education.

This section of AC-11 contains the following parts:

• Current Open Access Policy

• External Funding Agency Compliance Open Access Requirements

• Efforts to Broaden Author Rights to Publish Open Access

It should be noted that while not having an Open Access publication requirement does not prevent an institution from receiving full points for section AC-11, it is the intent of the Texas A&M University, through its Faculty Senate, to create such a policy as another means to promote global access to information and knowledge.

CURRENT OPEN ACCESS POLICY
In 2019, under instructions by the Faculty Senate, the Senate Research Committee passed a resolution recommending that Texas A&M develop and adopt an Open Access Policy (copy of the charge is attached in this section (Texas A&M Open Access Policy Charge). The COVID-19 pandemic and post-COVID recovery delayed the completion of this policy but work should begin again during the next academic years. As a template the Task Force is using Harvard University’s Berkman Klein Center document for drafting an Open Access Policy (https://cyber.harvard.edu/hoap/Drafting_a_policy). The Texas A&M University Open Access Policy will allow for publisher embargoes and/or provide a waiver option that allows authors to opt-out of the open access license/program for individual articles, policies, and commitments.

The Texas A&M University Libraries “is an active advocate of open access, believing that open access can help address both the price barriers and the permission barriers that undermine global access to the products of Texas A&M University’s scholarly and creative work, as well as helping alleviate the serious issue of providing Texas A&M scholars access to the world’s scholarly literature due to rising subscription costs. Our Libraries’ programs seek to provide the tools and services that remove barriers to scholars publishing their scholarship as open access.”

The University’s institutional repository, called OAKTrust (established in 2013), is charged with collecting, preserving and distributing “the scholarly output of the University, including scholarly articles and books, electronic theses and dissertations, conference proceedings, technical reports, digitized library collections, and data sets.” OAKTrust also provides a platform that supports both the collection of ongoing research data and the facilitation of online collaboration between research entities and/or individuals.

The Libraries’ support for Open Access seeks to provide the following benefits to the University:

1. Increased visibility, discoverability, and accessibility
   Open access literature has the potential to be much more accessible than print-only or subscription-based publications. For researchers, the Open Access model removes the barriers, such as subscription costs, to accessing literature, and the inconveniences associated with this traditional model. As more scholarly information is made freely available, scholars are relying much more on materials that they can find and retrieve online. Authors, with the possibilities of alternative accessibility, must consider how their research can be found and used.

2. Increased impact
   The obvious result of higher visibility of open access literature is that open access leads to increased impact and a greater citation rates. Multiple studies conducted over the last several years show that open access materials are cited at a higher rate than articles that are published traditionally.

3. Reduced cost
   For libraries, open access relieves the burden associated with the ever-increasing cost of serials subscriptions. Many academic libraries are seeing subscription costs increase greater than their purchasing budgets. This is further exacerbated by decreasing materials budgets. The result is that due to smaller budgets and rising costs, many university libraries are canceling vital information resources (serial packages and databases). 

To further mitigate rising resource costs, the Libraries has implemented transformative programs such as:

OpenEd – Open Educational Resources (OER)

OER are educational materials free to use and include textbooks, quizzes, assignments, instructional guides, and more. Students saved 2.2 million in AY 2023-2024 using library materials.

Library Purchases 

Texas A&M University Libraries purchases course materials when available through library subscriptions. This includes unlimited user e-books, streaming media, and a limited number of print books. These course materials can be placed on reserve for students, providing all the access but none of the cost.

Course Reserves

Electronic Reserves can help instructors organize their digital course materials, including OER, library-licensed materials, streaming media, and more in one place, making them more easily accessible to students. Print Reserves include print textbooks, DVDs, and other physical materials the Libraries purchase and makes available to students for short check-out periods to assist them in completing their coursework.

Open Access Publishing

The Libraries has negotiated agreements with specific publishers that allow researchers to publish open access articles free of charge or at a discounted rate.

EXTERNAL FUNDING AGENCY COMPLIANCE OPEN ACCESS REQUIREMENTS

While it has been noted in this section of AC-11 that compliance meeting external funding open access requirements does not qualify as meeting a University-wide open access requirement, it should still be noted that a large amount of research (and thus publications) arise from external funding agencies. These funding sources extend beyond just the NSF and NIH; many of which has also begun requiring open access publication. As such the University regularly audits compliance to these agencies funding requirements, after creating a long-term auditing infrastructure to ensure full compliance.

EFFORTS TO BROADEN AUTHOR RIGHTS TO PUBLISH OPEN ACCESS 

In August 2020, the Texas A&M University Libraries’ leadership began work to create the Texas Library Coalition for United Action (TLCUA) with the goal to improve access to scholarship, greater control over faculty content, and pricing models that are sustainable for strained library budgets in higher education. The Coalition was successful in implementing changes to author rights, which enable authors with greater freedom to publish their works in open access resources alongside publisher resources (e.g., the Elsevier license negotiations). At present there are 43 institutions that make up this coalition. 

The Texas A&M University Libraries participates in several open access publishing initiatives. More information regarding these initiatives is available at:

Open Access Publishing Opportunities (tamu.edu) 

Some of the initiatives funded allow authors to publish open access articles free of charge or at a discounted rate.

Texas A&M authors can publish Gold and hybrid open access articles at no cost to all journals from the following publishers. The number of publications is unlimited unless indicated otherwise:

• American Chemical Society (ACS)

• Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)

• Cambridge University Press

• The Company of Biologists

• De Gruyter Brill

• Emerald Publishing

• Institute of Physics (IOP)

• Microbiology Society

• Portland Press

• The Royal Society

• The Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC)

• Sage 

• Wiley 

The following publishers provide Texas A&M authors a discount for the article processing charge (APC):

• BioMed Central – 15% discount on APC

• Elsevier Gold Core -15% discount on APC

• Elsevier Hybrid Core - 10% discount on APC

• Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute - 10% discount on APC and 10% discount on the Book Process Charges

OAKTrust is the institutional repository for Texas A&M University and is intended to collect, preserve, and distribute the scholarly output of the university. Faculty are encouraged to self-submit their work, published and unpublished, to OAKTrust. More information about how to submit your work can be found on our OAKTrust Digital Repository page or by email: digital@library.tamu.edu.

Other open access memberships provide support for Texas A&M University authors for more sustainable publishing models:

• American Mathematical Society

• arXiv

• BioOne 

• BrowZine

• Directory of Open Access Journals

• GreenFile

• Independent Voices

• HathiTrust

• ORCID

• PhilPapers

• SCOAP3

• Technical Reports Archive & Image Library (TRAIL)
  

The Texas A&M University Libraries supports digital scholarship through the provision of modern, web-based publishing and repository services. This includes open access journal hosting services via the Texas Digital Library, of which Texas A&M University is a founding member. TDL electronic journals are powered by Open Journal Systems (OJS), an open-source journal management and publication software produced by the Public Knowledge Project. The Libraries provide infrastructure support for dissemination and preservation of scholarly output through its Digital Repository, OakTrust.

Data Sources:
https://library.tamu.edu/services/scholarly_communication/index.html
http://oaktrust.tamu.edu/
https://library.tamu.edu/services/scholarly_communication/Open_Access/opportunities.php 
https://library.tamu.edu/services/scholarly_communication/open_ed_awards.html
https://pkp.sfu.ca/ojs/
https://www.tdl.org/

Open Access Publishing Opportunities (tamu.edu)